Summertime in Galatia: A Well-Oiled Machine
Pastor Dan is still working his way through Galatians on Sunday mornings, and yesterday morning he focused on Galatians 5:16-26:
So I say, let the Holy spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.
When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
Those who belong in Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to the cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another. (New Living Translation)
Pastor Dan opened by talking about consistency and the need to be “consistent” in our walk with the Holy Spirit every day. He said, “Following the rules doesn’t change your heart.” Verse 17 says it’s a constant battle, but the Holy Spirit is stronger and is the winner! So, why wouldn’t we choose to be on the winning side?
The Facts:
1. Spirit-led people starve their desires to death. (v. 16-18) These people are choosing to walk in victory over passions, desires, etc. They are more concerned with living on the winning side, so their desires have less hold on them because they are in tune with what the Holy Spirit is doing in them, what He is leading them to, what He is convicting them of.
2. Self-led people are self-centric. (v. 19-21)
3. Spirit-led people are Spirit-centric. (v. 22-26)
Our human desires only have the power that we give them. We give our passions and desires their power because they have nothing on a believer. That’s our old master. We give the power to our passions and desires willingly because instead of surrendering all to Jesus, we surrender to our passions and desires. So, if someone says, “I just can’t beat this sin”, that’s a choice. That’s a choice not to walk by the Spirit, but to give in to our flesh.
Example: Small sins become big sins; the habitual sins in our life. Let’s compare sin to a small, little, tiny, baby dragon. So, the mythical, cute little creature. And we have that little baby dragon, and oh, it’s so cute when it sneezes and that little puff of smoke comes out of its nose. Oh, it’s so cute, I should feed it. So, we begin to feed the little baby dragon, and over a period of time, sooner or later, it starts to become a little bit bigger, then a little bit bigger, and we just keep feeding it. We keep giving it energy and power and the next thing you know, our whole house is filled with a fire-breathing dragon. But we fed it. We gave it the food.
Paul lists the things, in the second italicized paragraph above, because they impact your life and they impact the community of the church, not just you as an individual. These are community sins. When you choose to be drunk continually, it impacts the church, and not in a good way. These things are fruit of the flesh and they cause division in the community of Christ.
Some of the words on the list may be difficult to understand how they can affect community. Let’s take a look at the the word “sorcery”. In the context of Galatia, a translator translated this as a “drug-induced spell”. The word for this is “pharmakeia”. This sounds a lot like the English word “pharmacy”. It was a drug-induced stupor, which people in this time would use to try to manipulate powers against other individuals.
All of these things point to the above Fact #2: Self-led people are self-centric.
In contrast, the third paragraph in italics above, talks about the fruit of the Spirit, and it says, “There is no law against these.” Even Aristotle said, (paraphrased by Dan Alban), “You cannot create enough laws to create a righteous person.”
THE POINT: A church unites by the Spirit and divides by the flesh.
CHALLENGE: A consistent Christian life is a Spirit-engaged life.
To watch this message in its entirety or to watch the rest of Pastor Dan’s series on Galatians, go to our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@gfcofephrata5041/streams